March 20th, 2010

Dogs in (children’s) books update, and other children’s lit bits and bobs

In an attempt to overcome my aversion to literary dogs, I went to see the exhibit “The Little Dog Laughed…” this afternoon at The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. Harry the Dirty Dog was featured, and also Alice’s dog Dash, and Farley Mowat’s Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Snoopy, the Poky Little Puppy, Cracker “The Best Dog in Vietnam” (what a distinction!), Eloise’s dog Weenie, and Maurice Sendak’s dog Jennie from Higglety Pigglety Pop. A lovely display of books old and new, literary dog paraphernalia, and dog art. If I enjoyed it, just imagine what someone who likes dogs might think.

In other Toronto Library children’s book news, I followed everybody’s advice and requested The Night Kitchen. I loved the kitchen cityscape, and the story, and I get behind anything to do with cake in the morn. I also got out Brundibar, upon the recommendation of our wonderful librarian. Today when we were at Lillian H. Smith, I got a bunch of other books, including A Day with Nellie, and Miss Nelson is Missing which I probably haven’t thought about in twenty years but  upon glimpsing immediately realized that I used to be obsessed with.

If all this wasn’t enough, yesterday we made our second trip to Mabel’s Fables. I bought a gorgeous edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, whose illustrations are absolutely timeless. As Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems seem to be too, after 125 years (and I was inspired to seek them out after reading How the Heather Looks). The classic nature of this purchase is balanced out by our others, which were (delightfully) Sandra Boynton’s The Belly Button Book, My Little Word Book, and Baby Touch Colours.